Graphics design platform Canva has acquired artificial intelligence startup Simtheory and marketing automation firm Ortto, in a move aimed at transforming itself into a full-service AI-powered productivity and marketing platform.
The Australian company announced the dual acquisitions on Wednesday, though financial terms were not disclosed. The deals signal Canva’s deepening investment in AI and its ambition to move beyond design into a broader ecosystem that supports the entire workflow of content creation and marketing.
Simtheory brings capabilities in “agentic AI,” allowing teams to build intelligent assistants that can understand business context, integrate across tools, and automate complex tasks. Ortto, on the other hand, provides a customer data platform combined with marketing automation tools that enable businesses to manage campaigns across channels such as email, SMS, push notifications and in-app messaging.
Together, the two companies are expected to strengthen Canva’s infrastructure across AI collaboration, customer engagement, and data-driven marketing, all areas that are increasingly converging as enterprises seek unified platforms.
Canva said the acquisitions will help it evolve from a design-focused tool into a system where teams can manage the full lifecycle of their work from ideation and content creation to campaign execution and performance measurement.
“Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core,” Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht said, adding that Ortto enhances the company’s ability to power marketing workflows end-to-end.
Both Simtheory and Ortto were founded by brothers Chris Sharkey and Mike Sharkey, who previously built vacation rental platform Stayz. The duo will join Canva in leadership roles across its AI and marketing technology divisions.
The move comes as Canva accelerates an acquisition streak to bolster its enterprise and AI capabilities. In recent months, the company has snapped up startups including MagicBrief, MangoAI, Cavalry and Doohly, underscoring its aggressive push into automation, advertising and analytics.
The strategy appears to be paying off. Canva closed 2025 with approximately $4 billion in annualised revenue, more than 265 million users and over 31 million paying customers, highlighting its growing influence beyond its original design roots.
The latest acquisitions also come ahead of Canva’s upcoming “Canva Create” event, where the company is expected to unveil major updates to its platform and outline its next phase of growth.
As competition intensifies in the AI-powered productivity space, Canva is positioning itself not just as a design tool, but as a unified platform where creation, collaboration and marketing converge, powered increasingly by intelligent automation.
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